NAME

Building Perl for WinCE

DESCRIPTION

This file gives the instructions for building Perl5.8 and above for
WinCE. Please read and understand the terms under which this
software is distributed.

General explanations on cross-compiling WinCE

miniperl
is built. This is a single executable (without DLL), intended
to run on Win32, and it will facilitate remaining build process; all binaries
built after it are foreign and should not run locally.

miniperl
is built using ./win32/Makefile; this is part of normal
build process invoked as dependency from wince/Makefile.ce

After miniperl
is built, configpm
is invoked to create right Config.pm
in right place and its corresponding Cross.pm.

Unlike Win32 build, miniperl will not have Config.pm
of host within reach;
it rather will use Config.pm
from within cross-compilation directories.

File Cross.pm
is dead simple: for given cross-architecture places in @INC
a path where perl modules are, and right Config.pm
in that place.

That said, miniperl -Ilib -MConfig -we1
should report an error, because
it can not find Config.pm
. If it does not give an error -- wrong Config.pm
is substituted, and resulting binaries will be a mess.

miniperl -MCross -MConfig -we1
should run okay, and it will provide right
Config.pm
for further compilations.

During extensions build phase, a script ./win32/buldext.pl is invoked,
which in turn steps in ./ext subdirectories and performs a build of
each extension in turn.

All invokes of Makefile.PL
are provided with -MCross
so to enable cross-
compile.

BUILD

This section describes the steps to be performed to build PerlCE.
You may find additional information about building perl for WinCE
at http://perlce.sourceforge.net and some pre-built binaries.

Make

Normally you only need to edit ./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat
to reflect your system and run it.

File ./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat is actually a wrapper to call
nmake -f makefile.ce
with appropriate parameters and it accepts extra
parameters and forwards them to nmake
command as additional
arguments. You should pass target this way.

To prepare distribution you need to do following:

go to ./win32 subdirectory

edit file ./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat

run
compile.bat

run
compile.bat dist

Makefile.ce
has CROSS_NAME
macro, and it is used further to refer to
your cross-compilation scheme. You could assign a name to it, but this
is not necessary, because by default it is assigned after your machine
configuration name, such as "wince-sh3-hpc-wce211", and this is enough
to distinguish different builds at the same time. This option could be
handy for several different builds on same platform to perform, say,
threaded build. In a following example we assume that all required
environment variables are set properly for C cross-compiler (a special
*.bat file could fit perfectly to this purpose) and your compile.bat
has proper "MACHINE" parameter set, to, say, wince-mips-pocket-wce300
.

NOTE: during a build there could be created a number (or one) of Config.pm
for cross-compilation ("foreign" Config.pm
) and those are hidden inside
../xlib/$(CROSS_NAME) with other auxiliary files, but, and this is important to
note, there should be noConfig.pm
for host miniperl.
If you'll get an error that perl could not find Config.pm somewhere in building
process this means something went wrong. Most probably you forgot to
specify a cross-compilation when invoking miniperl.exe to Makefile.PL
When building an extension for cross-compilation your command line should
look like

..\miniperl.exe -I..\lib -MCross=mips-wce300-thrMakefile.PL

or just

..\miniperl.exe -I..\lib -MCrossMakefile.PL

to refer a cross-compilation that was created last time.

All questions related to building for WinCE devices could be asked in
perlce-user@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Using Perl on WinCE

DESCRIPTION

PerlCE is currently linked with a simple console window, so it also
works on non-hpc devices.

The simple stdio implementation creates the files stdin.txt
,
stdout.txt
and stderr.txt
, so you might examine them if your
console has only a limited number of cols.

When exitcode is non-zero, a message box appears, otherwise the
console closes, so you might have to catch an exit with
status 0 in your program to see any output.

stdout/stderr now go into the files /perl-stdout.txt and
/perl-stderr.txt.

PerlIDE is handy to deal with perlce.

LIMITATIONS

No fork(), pipe(), popen() etc.

ENVIRONMENT

All environment vars must be stored in HKLM\Environment as
strings. They are read at process startup.

PERL5LIB

Usual perl lib path (semi-list).

PATH

Semi-list for executables.

TMP

- Tempdir.

UNIXROOTPATH

- Root for accessing some special files, i.e. /dev/null, /etc/services.

ROWS/COLS

- Rows/cols for console.

HOME

- Home directory.

CONSOLEFONTSIZE

- Size for console font.

You can set these with cereg.exe, a (remote) registry editor
or via the PerlIDE.

REGISTRY

To start perl by clicking on a perl source file, you have
to make the according entries in HKCR (see ce-helpers/wince-reg.bat
).
cereg.exe (which must be executed on a desktop pc with
ActiveSync) is reported not to work on some devices.
You have to create the registry entries by hand using a
registry editor.

XS

The following Win32-Methods are built-in:

newXS("Win32::GetCwd",w32_GetCwd,file);

newXS("Win32::SetCwd",w32_SetCwd,file);

newXS("Win32::GetTickCount",w32_GetTickCount,file);

newXS("Win32::GetOSVersion",w32_GetOSVersion,file);

newXS("Win32::IsWinNT",w32_IsWinNT,file);

newXS("Win32::IsWin95",w32_IsWin95,file);

newXS("Win32::IsWinCE",w32_IsWinCE,file);

newXS("Win32::CopyFile",w32_CopyFile,file);

newXS("Win32::Sleep",w32_Sleep,file);

newXS("Win32::MessageBox",w32_MessageBox,file);

newXS("Win32::GetPowerStatus",w32_GetPowerStatus,file);

newXS("Win32::GetOemInfo",w32_GetOemInfo,file);

newXS("Win32::ShellEx",w32_ShellEx,file);

BUGS

Opening files for read-write is currently not supported if
they use stdio (normal perl file handles).

If you find bugs or if it does not work at all on your
device, send mail to the address below. Please report
the details of your device (processor, ceversion,
devicetype (hpc/palm/pocket)) and the date of the downloaded
files.

INSTALLATION

After installation & testing processes will stabilize, information will
be more precise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The port for Win32 was used as a reference.

History of WinCE port

5.

6.0

Initial port of perl to WinCE. It was performed in separate directory
named wince
. This port was based on contents of ./win32 directory.
miniperl
was not built, user must have HOST perl and properly edit
makefile.ce
to reflect this.

5.

8.0

wince port was kept in the same ./wince directory, and wince/Makefile.ce
was used to invoke native compiler to create HOST miniperl, which then
facilitates cross-compiling process.
Extension building support was added.

5.

9.4

Two directories ./win32 and ./wince were merged, so perlce build
process comes in ./win32 directory.

AUTHORS

Rainer Keuchel <coyxc@rainer-keuchel.de>

provided initial port of Perl, which appears to be most essential work, as
it was a breakthrough on having Perl ported at all.
Many thanks and obligations to Rainer!